Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
Self-Esteem or Self-Control?
Building willpower.
Here’s a simple cause-and-effect question. Does an increase in self-esteem lead to greater success in life? Or is it the other way round: an increase in success leads to greater self-esteem? It’s one of those tricky questions that can guide – or misguide – our public policy.
Nathaniel Branden did more than anyone else to popularize the idea that improving one’s self-esteem can lead to greater success. Pump up the self-esteem and everything else works better. Branden launched the idea when he published his book, The Psychology of Self-Esteem in 1969. (Branden had been Ayn Rand’s acolyte and lover; he broke with Rand in 1968 and published his new thinking a year later).
Branden’s work seemed to explain a lot and the self-esteem movement grew quickly. Educators – especially at the primary and secondary levels – adopted it enthusiastically. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.
In 2005, Roy Baumeister and his co-authors published a paper titled, “Exploding the Self-Esteem Myth”. The authors studied over 200 research papers and concluded “… self-esteem belongs on the same shelf as miracle diet pills.”
In 2009, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman published Nurture Shock – New Thinking About Children, which – among many other things – assessed 15,000 studies on self-esteem. They concluded that, “… high self-esteem doesn’t improve grades, reduce anti-social behavior, deter alcohol drinking or do much of anything good for kids. In fact, telling kids how smart they are can be counterproductive.”
Self-esteem seems to be yet another thing that we’ve gotten backwards. We’ve confused cause with effect.
So, what’s replacing self-esteem? The emerging consensus focuses on self-control. And one of the authors leading the way is Roy Baumeister. In a recent article in Scientific American, Baumeister writes that, “People with good control over their thought processes, emotions and behaviors not only flourish in school and in their jobs but are also healthier, wealthier and more popular.”
Similarly, David Brooks recently wrote about “The Moral Bucket List” in the New York Times. He notes that there are resumé virtues and eulogy virtues. We all know that eulogy virtues are more important than resumé virtues, but we spend our time developing the latter rather than the former.
Baumeister refers to self-control and willpower. Brooks uses a more traditional moral language and focuses on character. But the concepts overlap extensively. So, how does one build self-control, willpower, and character?
To begin with, Baumeister argues, we need to recognize that willpower is analogous, in many ways, to muscle power. Just as a muscle tires after exertion, so willpower can tire after we exercise it. Baumeister calls it ego depletion – if you use your willpower to resist Temptation X, you’ll have less left over to resist Temptation Y.
We’ve all experienced muscle fatigue from time to time and we can probably grasp the concept of willpower fatigue. But we also know that we can build our muscle strength through exercise. Does the same hold true for willpower? Apparently so.
Baumeister reports on a study that asked students to clean up their language (no cursing) and/or straighten up their posture for a period of two weeks. At the end of the period, researchers tested the students’ self-control ability. They “performed significantly better than a control group.”
Moving into Brooks’ territory, Baumeister goes on to say, “It has occurred to us from these studies that the Victorian notion of “building character” seems to have some scientific validity.”
So how does one build character and improve willpower? More on that in upcoming articles.
Donna Shalala and The Boom Boom Theory
Connector.
Donna Shalala spoke at a breakfast meeting at the University of Denver (DU) the other day. She seems to be one of the most connected people on earth. She’s the former president of Hunter College, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Miami. She also served for eight years as the Secretary of Health and Human Services during the Clinton administration. Perhaps most impressive (to me at least), over ten years at the University of Miami, she raised three billion dollars in voluntary contributions.
Our chancellor, Rebecca Chopp, interviewed Shalala before an audience of some 300 faculty, alumni, and students. The conversation soon turned to inclusive excellence (IE), which is a fundamental initiative at DU. We define IE as, “…the recognition that an … institution’s success is dependent on how well it values, engages and includes the rich diversity of students, staff, faculty, administrators, and alumni constituents. … The goal is to make IE a habit that is implemented and practiced consistently throughout …” the university.
Chancellor Chopp asked Shalala what advice she could offer to build an inclusively excellent university. Shalala’s answer reminded me that multi-channel communication is fundamental to multi-cultural success.
In a diverse community, Shalala noted, people have diverse communication styles. They may use the same word for different concepts. Or they may describe the same concept with different words. Further, they may well be tuned in to different channels.
Given the varying communication styles, Shalala argues that leaders of diverse communities need to deliver the same message multiple times, in multiple ways, through multiple channels to make sure it reaches all audiences. Shalala’s staff called this the Boom Boom theory of communication because one message (“Boom”) gets repeated across multiple channels.
It’s a good reminder that we need to repeat ourselves, perhaps more often than we think. I’ve written before that redundancy is not a sin; Shalala argues that we need to actively promote redundancy. Coupled with a concept like the sponsorship spine, the Boom Boom theory can produce effective communications in even the most diverse organization.
And what about those three billion dollars? Shalala says there’s no secret to fundraising. It requires a lot of patience and listening. Find out what your contributors are interested in and deliver it.
But patience and listening only take you so far. Shalala also reminded us of the value of good old-fashioned story telling. At fundraising events, she doesn’t talk about abstract concepts or programs or buildings. She simply tells stories. She admits that some of her stories “leave ‘em weepy” – they’re touching and effective. She wants her contributors to reach for their wallets. So first, she has to reach for their hearts. Combining the Boom Boom strategy with the leave-em-weepy tactics seems to be a killer combo.
Are Women Better Spycatchers?
Jeanne Vertefeuille (center) and her team.
Maureen Dowd’s most recent column profiled the sisterhood of analysts at the CIA. It got me wondering: are women better than men at the art of tracking down terrorists and catching spies? Here are three stories that point in that direction.
Story 1: Jeanne Vertefeuille and her team. Vertefeuille started her career at the CIA as a typist in 1954. She then worked her way up the ranks, serving as one of the agency’s first female station chiefs, among many other assignments. Along the way, she became an expert on counterintelligence and the Soviet Union. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she led a team of five analysts – three women and two men – that unmasked Aldrich Ames, a CIA mole whom the New York Times describes as “one of the most notorious traitors in American history.”
Story 2: “Maya” and her cohorts – in the movie Zero Dark Thirty, Jessica Chastain plays Maya, the CIA analyst who locates Osama bin Laden’s hideout and prompts the mission that killed him. The movie character was fashioned on a real woman in the CIA. According to an article in the Washington Times, the real Maya worked with four other women – including Jennifer Matthews, who was killed in Khost, Afghanistan — to identify and target Al-Qaeda’s leaders. The group became known as the Band of Sisters.
Story 3: The current sisterhood at the CIA. Dowd’s column profiles Gina Bennett, Lyssa Asbill, Sandra Grimes (who worked with Vertefeuille), Kali Caldwell, Jennifer Matthews, and a covert officer named Meredith. Dowd paints a portrait of women who are smart, incredibly dedicated, and nothing at all like Hollywood depictions of female agents. They do, however, have a fondness for the superhero Elastigirl from The Incredibles. As Elastigirl says, “Leave the saving of the world to men? I don’t think so.”
Why might women be better at catching spies than men? When Vertefeuille was asked to help track down a mole, it was assumed that “women had been chosen for the unit because their bosses felt that women would have more patience in combing through records.”
In Dowd’s column, Gina Bennett explains that women think differently than men: “Women don’t think more intuitively than men, but we tend to trust our own gut less. We are not going to put all our money in one basket.”
Is it true that women are more patient than men? Or less likely to be led astray by their own gut feel? Perhaps. But I’m struck by the fact that each of these stories involves teams rather than individuals. A few weeks ago, I wrote an article suggesting that women add value to teams in two key ways:
- They make better decisions about risk, especially under stress. Spycatching is nothing if not stressful.
- Teams that include women are more collaborative, in part, because, women are better able “to read between the lines and understand what someone is really saying.” Understanding what a spy is really saying might well make the difference between success and failure.
In theory, women are better at handling stress, deciding about risk, and understanding what’s really going on. In practice, they’ve caught some of the most notorious spies in our history. Maybe we should just put them in charge.
Habit Forming, Compulsive Products
Modern slot machines.
Here’s a good business model: create a habit-forming product or service that entices you to behave compulsively. Sex is probably the mother of all such operating models (both literally and figuratively). Other products that use the habituation model include tobacco, illicit drugs, gambling, alcohol, ERP software, and lately … mobile phones.
Here’s the good news: the list of products that are truly habit forming is fairly short. Here’s the bad news: it’s about to get much longer.
Product managers are now studying exactly what it is that makes products compulsive. They’re literally designing compulsion into their products.
We’re familiar with the habituation concept as it’s applied to gambling. Slot machines are no longer just clunky combinations of dials and gears. They’re now highly programmed devices that manage your behavior and entice you to linger longer. They sound like the same old clunky devices to lull you into forgetting who is managing whom.
We understand slot machines and, being the smart people that we are, we’re unlikely to be fooled by them. But what if wily product managers take the same concepts and apply them to, say, the websites you use regularly? Could they manage your behavior in the same way a slot machine does? You bet.
As Technology Review pointed out in a recent article:
Forging new habits has become an obsession among technology companies. In an age when commercial competition is only a clcik away, the new mandate is to make products and services that generate compulsive behvior. … The rise of mobile computing has intensifed that imperative. The small screen crowds out alternatives, focusing a person’s attention on a limited number of go-to apps.
So we can expect more “compulsive products” especially on our hand-held devices. How does compulsion work? According to Nir Eyal, a behavior engineer, it’s a four-step process. Think about your mobile phone.
- Trigger – a trigger prompts you and starts a process. Your phone buzzes in your pocket …
- Action – the buzzing phone causes you to interrupt whatever else you’re doing, take the phone out of your pocket, and look at it.
- Reward – the phone provides rewarding information. You find out that you favorite team won its game or that your boyfriend wants to take you to dinner.
- Investment – you invest yourself in the process by taking a further action, like responding to a message or adding a comment on a social media page. Your investment becomes a trigger from someone else.
All this may sound new and scary but, really, we’ve been preparing ourselves for this brave new world for a long time. When we had but one telephone in our house, my entire family jumped whenever it rang. It was the beginning of a long habituation process.
What to do? First, be aware that behavior engineers are designing experiences that promote compulsive behavior. I now think of my mobile phone as a slot machine in my pocket. Second, set limits on your behavior. When I go to a casino, I set a strict limit on how much I’ll lose. Then I stop. We can do the same with our devices. We can turn them off or set a timer that tells us when to stop.
Finally, we can also create our own, alternative rewards. I know my mobile phone creates compulsive behavior on my part. I check it often. But I’ve also created an alternate reward. When I check my phone, I remind myself to smile for at least ten seconds. Sure, it’s compulsive. But it brightens my day considerably.
Chief Stereotyping Officer
A manufactured stereotype.
Though I didn’t hold this title at my last job, I was effectively the Chief Stereotyping Officer. My job was to create stereotypes about our company and about our competitors. Like all stereotypes, the ones I created served mainly to simplify reality. Reality is complex. I wanted to simplify beliefs, values, and choices. And I wanted to tilt the scales in our favor.
My real title, of course, was Chief Marketing Officer. I created brands. And brands are nothing more than manufactured stereotypes.
The word “stereotype” has acquired negative connotations over the years. We admonish people not to stereotype. But the propensity to stereotype is innate. I call it a factory-installed bias.
In truth, we all stereotype. And we do it for very good reasons. Primarily, we stereotype to simplify the world around us. If one Volvo is safe, we may be justified in assuming that all Volvos are safe. If we had to test every Volvo to determine if it were safe or not, we might never reach a decision.
To stereotype simply means that we examine one item in a category – or one individual in a group – and reach conclusions about it. We then project those conclusions on to all members of the group.
We do this instinctively. It’s merely a simplifying assumption. And in many cases, we’re right. Most Volvos probably are safe. And that’s the purpose of branding – to convince you that all products from a particular company have common characteristics.
While the propensity to stereotype is innate, what we stereotype is based on culture and experience. Stereotypes become pernicious when they’re about people. When we stereotype gender, it becomes sexism. When we stereotype race or ethnicity, it becomes racism or ethnic prejudice. When we stereotype religions, it can lead to apocalyptic religious wars.
Stereotypes can also change over time. When I was a kid, products that were labeled “Made In Japan” were assumed to be poor quality. Now the opposite is true. Similarly, when I was young, people talked about “women drivers” as if they all behaved the same way. I don’t hear that kind of talk today so perhaps this is a stereotype that has disappeared.
Of course, most branding campaigns are not about people but about products or services. We marketers are simply taking advantage of an innate human behavior. People want to generalize about their experiences. We’d like to help you do that. We simply want to steer those generalizations in a particular direction.
People sometimes suggest that stereotyping is the sign of a lazy mind. Actually, it’s the sign a human mind. We should recognize that it’s part of who we are. At the same time, we should recognize that stereotyping people is degrading, erroneous, and just plain wrong.
Branding works because it aims directly at human nature. It’s a form of stereotyping that benefits both consumers and vendors. For consumers, it simplifies choices. For vendors, it creates strong reputations. So, let’s use stereotyping for what it’s good for and not for what it’s bad for. And, if you need a Chief Stereotyping Officer, I’m your man.
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